Lived Experience Forum

[ivana]

From my research,and things I have seen in the past,stigma is still very present from Hospital staff and/or Ambulance workers towards people with Mental Illnesses, particularly Hospitals in more suburban areas outside of the main cities.
They are still treated very poorly and spoken to disrespectfully, and bystanders will say nothing out of fear of retribution or fear of ridicule.
I don't think any of the recent attempts to end stigma has "touched" these Hospitals at all as they are oblivious that these anti stigma campaigns even exist.
For example,these staff members are more likely to watch forty on TV as opposed to watching Abc Mental As programme or the Q and A programme about depression etc.

What ideas do you have that Sane could do to help expose and address the stigmatising/discrimatory attitudes that still exists at these suburban Public Hospitals?

My idea is that Sane could create a detailed survey questionnaire that would ask people who have been patients of these hospitals to rate out of 1-5 how respectfully they were treated,what tone they were talked to,what their experience was etc...
But Sane should give these surveys out in the hospitals grounds and not just online so they could reach people's views who may otherwise not go online or have access to or cognitive ability to use the internet.

That way,organisations like Sane would have a greater idea into what problems still exist,and in what areas,and be able to create a plan to counter them because sometimes I feel the only people that are tuned into "anti stigma campaigns" are people that either have a mental illness,their families or people that already believe mentally ill shouldn't be stigmatised against,but the "perpertrators" themselves are actually tuned out,if this makes sense.

[Alessandra1992]

Great idea Ivana..there is a research project called CORE in Victoria that is travelling all over Victoria to survey mental health. Being run by Melbourne University and employing peer workers to conduct interviews and have heard good things about it..

[Maude]

This is a good idea in principle if it is done the right way and if something specific and meaningful is done with the data.

In relation to the comment, "stigma is still very present from Hospital staff and/or Ambulance workers towards people with Mental Illnesses, particularly Hospitals in more suburban areas outside of the main cities" this implies that hospitals in main cities don't stigmatise mental helath patients. I am in a major city (Sydney) and my observed experience is, that the last thing highly skilled accident and emergency nursing staff want to see are mentally ill patients. Nursing staff often respond in a way that implies that they've won second (or third) prize.

In April this year I witnessed a female patient presenting at a major teaching hospital in Sydney in a severely depressed state being treated woefully. I watched the situation (and could hear) over a period of four hours.

It frustrates me every time I see and hear the advice that people severely depressed should present at their local Emergency. The very last thing major hospital Emergency department staff want when they are up to their ears in strokes, heart attacks and Friday night drunk people, are severely depressed people to deal with and the way I have observed such patients to be treated makes that perfectly clear.

[kato]

Ok going with the flow of this topic,

what it appears to me is that the campaigns and slogans etc have worked in making mental illness more known.

The big issue is when the general public are told if suffering from illness you should present yourself to emergency departments what they don't explain is that the emergency department at most if not all public hospitals have guidelines to adhere to and they will only help or admit a person who is in serious crisis.

I know from expierence for myself and for a friend,

my friend was entering psychosis BUT was quite lucid the triage nurse was uncaring abrupt and asked in such a manner regarding 'S' that my friend nearly walked straight out, my friend wanted to self admit,

I spent 4 hours convincing her to keep to it, when finally seen by a nurse -maybe a psychiatric nurse not to sure we were informed that in her state the best she could reccomend is to call the cat team if she gets worse.... my friend was devastated

the nurse then gave her some sleeping pills and then informed us even if she was worse they had no room for her anyway.....

I spent the next 3 days convincing her to see a gp and to speak to cat team

another resource that is getting stretched to the limit.

Help seems to be only available to those in severe crisis everyone else can get help from help lines. 

That attitude needs to change

If I was not supporting my friend that night and she had gone alone I doubt she would be here today,

the rejection and treatment would have tipped her over the edge

[ivana]

Maude,

I agree with you totally.
I didn't want to imply that big city hospitals are less stigmatising but just didn't know how to word the thread in a way that wouldn't just get "rosecolouredglasses" comments of "stigma is reduced now".

Your right about the dismissive or downright aggressive from hostile attitudes from Emergency Room staff towards people with Mental Illnesses.They often view them as nuisance who are wasting hospital funds and time and not "exciting" and don't give them an adrenalin high (like heart attack patients for example).
It may not be Politically correct to say it but it's true.

[kenny66]

There have been a lot of surveys done and data collected by a number of bodies about stigma and treatment of people with MI.

I think it is an agreed fact that people with MI are stigmatised at all levels of society including by some within the medical/nursing profession. Its fine to have the data but concrete steps need to be taken to obtain an outcome based on it.

I believe efforts to fight stigma against people with MI have been dramatically unsuccessful. Personally I confront it in every aspect of my life on a regular basis. A lot of service providers have difficulty with it. One of the worst examples I encountered of stigmatised attitude and behaviour actually came from a disability employment service provider.

My experience with GPs has been poor, both from not understanding mental health issues and being uncertain and possibly afraid of it.

MI stigma should be a module in the various qualification courses for hospital staff, including the admin staff, who can have their own confusion on how to deal with people with MI.

On a positive note, I live in a small regional town in the Far North. By contrast here the Accident and Emergency staff have treated me with compassion and absolute professionalism even though they might have never come in contact with schizoaffective disorder. I was pretty unwell during my first admission and they couldn't have been more caring.

It might be something to do with a small country town. The coppers are great here as well. I was carted off by them once to the A and E. Made me feel like a member of the force by the time got to there, They wouldn't give me a badge though!!!!!!

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@Maude wrote:

This is a good idea in principle if it is done the right way and if something specific and meaningful is done with the data.

In relation to the comment, "stigma is still very present from Hospital staff and/or Ambulance workers towards people with Mental Illnesses, particularly Hospitals in more suburban areas outside of the main cities" this implies that hospitals in main cities don't stigmatise mental helath patients. I am in a major city (Sydney) and my observed experience is, that the last thing highly skilled accident and emergency nursing staff want to see are mentally ill patients. Nursing staff often respond in a way that implies that they've won second (or third) prize.

In April this year I witnessed a female patient presenting at a major teaching hospital in Sydney in a severely depressed state being treated woefully. I watched the situation (and could hear) over a period of four hours.

It frustrates me every time I see and hear the advice that people severely depressed should present at their local Emergency. The very last thing major hospital Emergency department staff want when they are up to their ears in strokes, heart attacks and Friday night drunk people, are severely depressed people to deal with and the way I have observed such patients to be treated makes that perfectly clear.

---

Even the coppers

[ivana]

That's right Kenny.
Most of the the time there's a situation of data being collection/a study being fine,and then it being publicised in the media.Then it simply gets forgotten about and no concrete measures are put into place to counter it.

I believe the reason why anti stigma campaigns are unsuccessful is partly due to a "rosecolouredglasses" viewpoint from people involved in these campaigns.
They don't tell it how it is.
Instead of saying outright "there are many doctors and nurses who stigmatise mentally ill " they say instead "doctors and nurses are mostly good people who are just trying their best..."
So,with this attitude that refuses to admit the truth,nothing can change because we can't change what won't be outright acknowledged.

Anti stigma campaigns also don't work because they don't get to the heart of why people stigmatise-in this instance healthcare providers.
In a way,the anti stigma campaigns are out of touch because they purely only say things like "it's ok to admit mental illness,don't stigmatise against it"
Frankly,it's almost comical,these anti stigma compaigns and very narrow vision.

Beyond Blue etc often comes out with reports saying stigma still exists in hospitals but after the report,no solid measures are put into Public Hospitals to change this.

They should be running pilot programmes regarding how to change this and people with lived experiences should be invited to be part of creating these programmes.

[NikNik]

Hi all

I completely respect everyone's view on this. There are many organisations, universities and other institutions that do studies and research around areas such as stigma. I can understand your frustrations generated by not seeing the system change.

I want to quickly address another (but related) matter quickly (& hope it doesn't take the convo off track) I want to flag that we've had to ask a few members lately to edit their post and remove the names of organisations/companies due to a risk comments being perceived as defamation, as outlined in the Forum Guidelines. Defamation is such murky waters and there's no black and white. So while we don't want to cut conversations or not acknowledge issues within the mental health system, we ask that people steer clear of mentioning specific organisations/ companies/ individuals.

We feel a robust conversation can still take place, and the context will not be impacted by avoiding naming organisations/ companies/ individuals.

I don't want to steer thing convo off course with this post. So if you would like to discuss the Forum Guidelines, please start a new thread in the Feedback area.

Always inspired by the level of passion of you all.

Nik

[kenny66]

Hi Ivana. I agree. I think its about time a lot of the players including advocates and other groups look at themselves and the strategies pursued to reduce stigma.

A lot of the statements made about this issue are self serving and in many ways meaningless.

Does anyone measure outcomes from the strategies employed by the various interest groups promoting reduction in stigma relating to MI. Now that would be an interesting stat.

As a consumer and client, noone has ever asked my opinion on anything to do with mental health. I think a lot of groups think that our opinions dont matter. I dont feel either engaged or necessarily well represented on this issue.

One would have thought an initiative for the full spectrum of the medical profession to interact intensively with MI people in addition to their advocates would be a fairly logical place to start. The very fact that this does not happen indicates the level of stigma attached to the average person with MI.

[kristin]

Hey @kato ,

Well done. What an amazing friend you are. Sounds like you saved a good one that day. Thanks for being there, and persisting. SO sorry for what your friend went through - sadly finding help for people with severe MH issues, including suicidality, is extremely difficult.

If you have a decent GP my suggestion would be to get a referral from the GP for the A&E before presenting, they tend to take that a lot more seriously. It shouldn't be so, but sadly it is.

Kindest regards, 
Kristin